wotcha
After a few months of sitting on my hard drive I've uploaded the pictures of my
latest project to my site. The project is to build a castle modularly, each time
building on the previous so at the end of each stage I havew a full castle.
Stages 1-3 are complete, 4 has been started on and my wife is moaning already at
the amount of space it takes up (so I'll probably stop at 4 or 5 stages)

Stage 1
[url=http://www.minifig.co.uk/default.asp?id=3&mID=33]
[/url]

Here is Stage 2

I'll put stage 3 up when its photographed

ta

James Stacey
------
www.minifig.co.ukI'm a citizen of Legoland travellin' Incommunicado

Wow! Neat! The details are very good. I like the use of short string as handrails. The crane looks nice, too. The whole thing is very well done. The keep looks nice, although it would look nicer if there weren't so many wall pieces in it.

Very nice indeed. The variety of shapes and designs in your outer wall look great. The landscape looks great. There are a great deal of those little construction details that really make a MOC look somewhat real. Can't wait to see what stage 3 and 4 will look like.

Will

After a long absence, I have returned. I can't wait to start building again.

Wow...first that is a awesome castle you've got going there. Especially how it isn't just straight grey walls and towers and stuff, it has colour and more interest. Awesome work...can't wait for the next stage.

As for the arrow slit - I came up with the idea myself. When I was building the keep I wanted a unique sort of window idea for it, but I couldn't come up with anything original that I hadn't seen done already. I also knew I really wanted the 'cross' look to it, I personally like it much better. Then I was finally getting pretty annoyed with trying stuff that wasn't working, then I had a few arches and headlight bricks from other attempts there and then suddenly realized those might have a chance of working. And then as a bonus the headlight bricks have the little bottom part to make the horizontal opening a bit thinner. Then it took me forever to get it to work in the wall and fit, but it worked out eventually. (Thanks to the guys in C-C chat too!)

I am really not surprised someone else came up with it before me though, although it would have been cool if I was.

Now I wrote far too much there when this is a thread about your MOC, I apologize, but I just wanted to set that straight. Can't wait for the next stage of the castle, keep it up!

I'm glad to see your latest project, and it is definately impressive. However, it lacks the life and style that minifigs and minifig related details provide. I hope the final version will feature these delightful details of which I speak.

Sincerely,

Lord Marshal Leonhart
His Majesty's Servant

===
"The sound of laughter is like
the vaulted dome of
a temple of happiness. "
~-Milan Kundera-~

I have to admit that when I looked at phase one I didn't like the original keep very much--kind of boxy and boring. But when you add in the curtain wall, this becomes really interesting and cool. I like the idea of building in stages. You might even change up styles a little bit as you go from one stage to another, because long term projects like this might have changed as the people building them did. Stone sources might have changed, too, so you could even (heresy alert) do a stage out of new gray to signify a different quarry used for later structures.

I like the destinct personal style of your castle, and the great effort you've taken to do the landscaping. My feedback:

KeepThe long facades of your keep would prehaps look more natural, when you offset the middle (horizontal) row of windows by half the window-to-window distance.

CraneCranes as large as the one you've modeled where usualy powerd by a treadmill (with one ore more workers inside) This was cheaper, safer, more releable and much easier to construct than a geared winch mechanism.
I suggest Tan Fence Spindled 4 x 4 x 2 Quarter Round parts for the treadmill:
a circle of these should provide room to hold a minifig inside.